Customer Registration

[Jay Guliano]

We just got our customer registration system up. After I added my test name
and password the next screen was "Account Information". That screen has a
link to the "Ship To" screen. When you go to that screen there of course is
no address listed and no way to add one. Is this normal?

--
Jay Guliano
jay@ontimemall.com
www.ontimemall.com

[jim]

Addresses are added to the Ship To location when you finalize an order.
Once you have placed an order the address will display on the Account
Information screen.

Jim

Jay Guliano wrote:

We just got our customer registration system up. After I added my test name
and password the next screen was "Account Information". That screen has a
link to the "Ship To" screen. When you go to that screen there of course is
no address listed and no way to add one. Is this normal?

[Don Lundell]

On Fri, 08 Jul 2005 22:41:47 -0600, jim <jstavast@xmission.com> wrote:

Addresses are added to the Ship To location when you finalize an order.. Once you have placed an order the address will display on the Account Information screen.

Jim

Jay Guliano wrote:
We just got our customer registration system up. After I added my test name and password the next screen was "Account Information". That screen has a link to the "Ship To" screen. When you go to that screen there of course is no address listed and no way to add one. Is this normal?

I noticed the same thing. It's a bug/problem. The current flow is non-intuitive.

The the customer registration should work like in one of these 2 ways:

1.

- add to cart
- click on register
- enter registration data (NOTE: here's the important part) the page should
return to the shopping cart, NOT to the Account Information page
(there's nothing useful to do there at that point, and in fact it's
confusing because if you go to Payment or Ship To page - there's nothing
there, just a blank - confusing).
- continue with shopping cart

2.

- add to cart
- click on register
- enter registration data
- registration data allows the person to add Payment and/or Ship To data,
then continue to the cart

The fix should be that when you've entered the registration data, it
takes you back to the cart page.

I believe I'm running the latest version of Shopsite (hosted on pair.com).

Has anyone else submitted this bug?

- dc

[jim]

Answers to your questions:
1. The original release of Customer Registration allowed the customer to
register and then they were redirected back to the cart. However, the
registration screen is accessed securely while the cart is not. When
you clicked on the submit button the registration form would be
"submitted" and you would get a warning that you were being redirected
to a non-secure page. There were Many complaints about the warning
scaring people into thinking the site was non-secure after they just
submitted their information. The security warning is not something that
should be of concern to anyone since the form information is transfered
securely but try to explain that to the vast number of paranoid internet
users. The current screen flow was worked out to get around this issue.
By going to the account info screen the shopper stays on a secure page
when the form "submit" occurs. From Account Info page an href which
doesn't cause the warning to occur is used to get to the cart so the
security warning is avoided.

2. I agree with you on being able to enter address information when you
register instead of when you go through the checkout process.

Jim

Don Lundell wrote:

On Fri, 08 Jul 2005 22:41:47 -0600, jim <jstavast@xmission.com> wrote:

Addresses are added to the Ship To location when you finalize an
order. Once you have placed an order the address will display on the
Account Information screen.

Jim

Jay Guliano wrote:
We just got our customer registration system up. After I added my
test name and password the next screen was "Account Information".
That screen has a link to the "Ship To" screen. When you go to that
screen there of course is no address listed and no way to add one. Is
this normal?

I noticed the same thing. It's a bug/problem. The current flow is
non-intuitive.

The the customer registration should work like in one of these 2 ways:

1.

- add to cart
- click on register
- enter registration data (NOTE: here's the important part) the page should
return to the shopping cart, NOT to the Account Information page
(there's nothing useful to do there at that point, and in fact it's
confusing because if you go to Payment or Ship To page - there's nothing
there, just a blank - confusing).
- continue with shopping cart

2.

- add to cart
- click on register
- enter registration data
- registration data allows the person to add Payment and/or Ship To data,
then continue to the cart

The fix should be that when you've entered the registration data, it
takes you back to the cart page.

I believe I'm running the latest version of Shopsite (hosted on pair.com).

Has anyone else submitted this bug?

- dc

[Don Lundell]

On Thu, 21 Jul 2005 07:07:06 -0600, jim <jstavast@xmission.com> wrote:

Answers to your questions:
1. The original release of Customer Registration allowed the customer to register and then they were redirected back to the cart. However, the registration screen is accessed securely while the cart is not. When you clicked on the submit button the registration form would be "submitted" and you would get a warning that you were being redirected to a non-secure page. There were Many complaints about the warning scaring people into thinking the site was non-secure after they just submitted their information. The security warning is not something that should be of concern to anyone since the form information is transfered securely but try to explain that to the vast number of paranoid internet users. The current screen flow was worked out to get around this issue. By going to the account info screen the shopper stays on a secure page when the form "submit" occurs. From Account Info page an href which doesn't cause the warning to occur is used to get to the cart so the
security warning is avoided.

I understand the rationale for that. But when the customer clicks the back-to-cart button
(which is the only choice really as the account buttons don't do anything) he'll get the
non-secure page warning, right? If so, there isn't much of a difference.

2. I agree with you on being able to enter address information when you register instead of when you go through the checkout process.

As a workaround, I put the following text in the Customer Account section of
a modified customer registration template, just about the back-to-cart button:

"If you've just registered, click on the Back to Cart button."

This will at least point a newly-registered customer to continue with the check-out
process rather than (I hope) try to fill in the payment or ship-to information (which
he can't).

What's the process for submitting this to Shopsite as a formal request for bug fix?
Does Shopsite support read this forum?

Thanks,

- dc

[loren_d_c]

"I understand the rationale for that. But when the customer clicks the
back-to-cart button (which is the only choice really as the account
buttons don't do anything) he'll get the non-secure page warning, right?
If so, there isn't much of a difference."

No. Well, maybe. The difference is that going directly back to the cart
immediately after registering or logging in requires a 'redirect' from
secure to non-secure. In the newer v7.1 method when you go back to the
secure Account screen the button to go to the cart is just an href link
(so no redirecting occurs). Some browsers will display a warning when
clicking an href link that goes from a secure screen to a non-secure
screen, but the shopper always have the option to turn this particular
warning off, so most people only see this once and many have probably
already turned this off before they ever come to your store. The
difference with the redirect warning is that it can never be turned off
by the shopper, they are guaranteed to always see it if you redirect
from a secure page to a non-secure one.

Of course there is no real security issue either time the browser
warnings may be displayed. But for a non-internet-savvy shopper, seeing
it might scare them, so anything that can be done to avoid it should be
embraced.

-Loren



Don Lundell wrote:

On Thu, 21 Jul 2005 07:07:06 -0600, jim <jstavast@xmission.com> wrote:

Answers to your questions:
1. The original release of Customer Registration allowed the customer
to register and then they were redirected back to the cart. However,
the registration screen is accessed securely while the cart is not.
When you clicked on the submit button the registration form would be
"submitted" and you would get a warning that you were being redirected
to a non-secure page. There were Many complaints about the warning
scaring people into thinking the site was non-secure after they just
submitted their information. The security warning is not something
that should be of concern to anyone since the form information is
transfered securely but try to explain that to the vast number of
paranoid internet users. The current screen flow was worked out to
get around this issue. By going to the account info screen the
shopper stays on a secure page when the form "submit" occurs. From
Account Info page an href which doesn't cause the warning to occur is
used to get to the cart so the security warning is avoided.


I understand the rationale for that. But when the customer clicks the
back-to-cart button
(which is the only choice really as the account buttons don't do
anything) he'll get the
non-secure page warning, right? If so, there isn't much of a difference.

2. I agree with you on being able to enter address information when
you register instead of when you go through the checkout process.


As a workaround, I put the following text in the Customer Account
section of
a modified customer registration template, just about the back-to-cart
button:

"If you've just registered, click on the Back to Cart button."

This will at least point a newly-registered customer to continue with
the check-out
process rather than (I hope) try to fill in the payment or ship-to
information (which
he can't).

What's the process for submitting this to Shopsite as a formal request
for bug fix?
Does Shopsite support read this forum?

Thanks,

- dc

[Don Lundell]

On Thu, 21 Jul 2005 11:15:45 -0600, Loren <loren_d_c@yahoo.com> wrote:

"I understand the rationale for that. But when the customer clicks the back-to-cart button (which is the only choice really as the account buttons don't do anything) he'll get the non-secure page warning, right? If so, there isn't much of a difference."

No. Well, maybe. The difference is that going directly back to the cart immediately after registering or logging in requires a 'redirect' from secure to non-secure. In the newer v7.1 method when you go back to the secure Account screen the button to go to the cart is just an href link (so no redirecting occurs). Some browsers will display a warning when clicking an href link that goes from a secure screen to a non-secure screen, but the shopper always have the option to turn this particular warning off, so most people only see this once and many have probably already turned this off before they ever come to your store. The difference with the redirect warning is that it can never be turned off by the shopper, they are guaranteed to always see it if you redirect from a secure page to a non-secure one.

Of course there is no real security issue either time the browser warnings may be displayed. But for a non-internet-savvy shopper, seeing it might scare them, so anything that can be done to avoid it should be embraced.

-Loren

I'll buy that.

So the fix ought to be:

- (perhaps) A block of text that explains the the new registrant should return to the cart

- (more importantly) The Ship To and Payment pages should not display the blank forms.
It's this form:

<form name="cr" class="cr" action="registration.cgi" method=post

It's a pretty easy fix - there's no reason to display them if there's no information to
display. (Is there a way in the templates to only display the form is it exists?)

- dc

[Nikolaus Gruchot]

Hello Don,

I have been down the same path some months ago, when taking cr online. As I
am located in Germany and have to translate the complete parts anyway, I can
tell you that the perfect place for your "block of text" mentioned below is
here:

Store preferences -> Store text -> Registration => In the Section "Account
information" add your text block in the "Select the order below and click
View to see that order's information.: " field like this:

Select the order below and click <b>View</b> to see that order's
information.<p><b>Hint:</b> You can only edit data here, that has been saved
during a completed purchase. Please return to the shopping cart and finalize
an order.



That is what I have done (in German) and there never ever was a question or
a complaint.

Best regards from Germany,

Niko


"Don Lundell" <noone@nowhere.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:opst9xd8d8qvhcpf@localhost...
On Thu, 21 Jul 2005 11:15:45 -0600, Loren <loren_d_c@yahoo.com> wrote:

So the fix ought to be:

- (perhaps) A block of text that explains the the new registrant should
return to the cart

[...]

- dc

[lance uppercut]

as this thread is nearly two years old, a bump may be in order. has anyone discovered any other workarounds to what is apparently still a bug in SS?

also, a general question related to CR: I took my HTML design code and populated it into a customer registration template under the Merchandising menu. Where the 'content' area of my page is, I entered in the code entries from an example SS cr template. I saved, configured my CR section to call the newly created template, and published. However, when I do so, my store does not call any of my HTML code. In essence, it appears in a very unformmated way (none of my custom header/footer shows, it looks nothing at all like the site I'm creating). Any insight as to why this might be? Apologies in advance if I'm missing something obvious, I'm very new to SS templates.

Thanks.

[BFChris]

Did you make sure the template you edited to include your code is the active one? You do this under Commerce Setup--Customer Registration--Configure--Registration Template?

~~Barefoot Chris

[lance uppercut]

yes, it was made active prior to publication.

thanks.